American theocracy

In his book, American Theocracy, Kevin Phillips wrote about the new phenomenon of fundamentalist religion in driving American policy, including U.S. military adventures in "the Middle Eastern Bible lands." He goes on: "The
rapture, end-times, and Armageddon hucksters in the United States rank
with any Shiite ayatollahs, and the last two presidential elections
mark the transformation of the GOP into the first religious party in
U.S. history."

That this remains true was clear from President-elect McCain’s kissing of Rick Warren’s ring at the suburban megachurch over the weekend, to the rapturous applause of the Orange County "conservative" congregation. The "maverick," in his desperate effort to get elected, mouthed all the Republican culture war theocratic platitudes. "Paris is worth a mass," as Henry of Navarre said. Now it comes out that McCain may have violated the "cone of silence" and known in advance the questions to be asked. That Obama went into this hostile environment at all is to be commended, I suppose. That he gave thoughtful answers will not help him at all with the anti-intellectual, know-nothing "Southernized" (to use Phillips’ word) American electorate.

I write "I suppose" about Obama because of those stubborn words in Article VI of the Constitution: "…no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."
 

It may be that Warren represents "the new face" of evangelicals, who are interested in social justice and stewardship of God’s creation, as well as gay marriage and abortion. This interest group is as entitled to participate in the political process as much as the NRA or the NAACP. Yet I keep coming back to Phillips’ thesis and its worrying implications. I add in Susan Jacoby’s bracing The Age of American Unreason, which documents the dumbing down of our citizens and the shortening of their attention spans. It’s not a comforting picture. It could give us not four more years of George W. Bush, but something much worse. Bush no-nothingism wedded to McCain’s short fuse, itchy trigger finger and opportunism.

And what has Bush’s theocracy lite given us? War against a nation that didn’t attack us. The lethal, perhaps deliberately incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina. A hostility to issues of social justice. Deliberate paralysis on addressing global warming when it could still be significantly ameliorated. A culture of unprecedented greed, venality and corruption, reaching into the highest levels of the White House. His Supreme Court has done less to end abortion than to increase the power of plutocrats and limit the access of average Americans to legal redress. Pop culture, for profit, is more debased than ever. Bush is the first president in history to enshrine torture as American policy. (Meanwhile, gay marriage is flourishing.) 

And Bush isn’t even a megachurch evangelical — he’s a Methodist, like me and Hillary (talk about a big tent). I recall he once, as governor, had a Methodist-like response to the abortion problem: that a Constitutional amendment isn’t the answer in a closely divided, polarized country. The answer is to change people’s hearts. But that was then.

If we were really asking what Jesus would do, we’d have been praying for Osama bin Laden as well as singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. We would have forgiven our attackers, even as we dealt with them (Reinhold Niebuhr eloquently settled this contradiction in World War II). We would spend more time comforting the last, the least, the lost and the prisoner than further enriching the gilded CEO. We would remember cautions against judging and that camel-through-the-eye-of -the-needle thing. We might come to understand that the "kingdom of heaven" is not a secular governing structure, even if its contemplation might guide the prayerful heart of an individual, secular leader.

But American theocracy is more about posing and being comfortable with our prejudices and mindless "consuming." It doesn’t represent, I hope, most people of Christian faith, although a disturbing number of them appear to be swayed by it. The Rev. Pat Robertson, rich, powerful and insular, can say the most outrageous things with no consequences. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, speaking truth to power on social justice, is a pariah. Tell me how that works?

A theocracy is profoundly un-American, unsuited to the governing of a diverse continental nation. It is, as the Founders would have put it, dangerous to our liberties. That’s why they tried to prevent it.